Page 61 of Feralheart

I walked over to Lykor’s head and hummed. He stopped thrashing, trying to escape the binding, and settled.

His scales had dulled to ash-gray, but up close I could see more. Burn scars webbed his left flank, pale twisted skin where scales had never grown back. A few holes riddled the delicate membrane of his wings. Burns that had healed badly, leaving puckered scars and gaps that would never close properly.

He’d competed in the Scorching, and it had broken something inside him that healing magic couldn’t touch.

And now I was about to make him do it again.

Unless I didn’t.

I could forfeit. Walk away. Let them call me a coward while Tolross died slowly in Shaleside.

Or I could climb on this broken dragon’s back and break him further.

I couldn’t drag in a breath. The moment I signed that waiver, I’d chosen my brother over everything else, and that choice was a blade I’d swallow every day for the rest of my life, however long that turned out to be.

I breathed in through my nose. Out through the mouth. My mother’s trick for when the world became too much.

It didn’t work. The world was always too much.

The official’s voice cut through again, and he pointed to the older woman. “First rider. Begin.”

No pairs this time, then.

More bets erupted.

The older woman paused before mounting, reaching up to touch the dragon’s neck once. Gentle, like she was apologizing. Then she climbed into the saddle, and the dragon launched upward, its wings snapping out. It flew through the fire maze’s entrance.

The viewing enchantment activated, and images appeared above the arena in a shimmer that quickly solidified, this time they were back far enough even we could see what happened inside the maze.

They navigated the first turn. The woman was doing fine, her dragon responding to the reins, banking carefully around the corner. The second turn came and flames erupted from runes along the ground. But she’d timed it right. They flew through the gap as fire churned behind them.

My heart skipped. She was going to make it.

Three runes flared at once.

Her dragon tried to dodge, its wings snapping it left, but the corridor was too narrow. Its right wing clipped the stone wall, and they spiraled down. The dragon tried to pull up, but the corridor was too narrow, or they were going too fast, and the stone caught them wrong.

Two shrieks echoed back at us, dragon and woman, braided together. My breath caught halfway down and stuck there, my ribs locked around it.

I counted because I couldn’t stop myself.

One. Two. Three.

The screams kept going.

Four. Five. Six.

Ten. Fifteen.

The blonde woman clapped her hands over her ears. The gray-bearded man turned away.

Seventeen. Twenty.

Silence dropped like a guillotine before sound rushed back all at once. The musicians playing. The nobles laughing. My pulse slamming hard in my ears.

The official’s voice echoed. “Cleared for retrieval.”

All those names the woman had been saying, and I’d never learned hers.